


Neal and Jim

by Frumion_III



Category: Sherlock (TV), White Collar (TV 2009)
Genre: Are either of these fandoms still alive?, Bisexual Male Character, Bisexual Neal Caffrey, Concerned parent Sebastian Moran, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Gay Jim Moriarty, Genius Jim Moriarty, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Will Go Down With This Ship, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I saw one (1) youtube edit of this pairing and here we are, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Jim Moriarty, POV Neal Caffrey, Possessive Jim Moriarty, The Author Regrets Nothing, This is all because of a 45 second edit set to "in love with a criminal", What am I doing, Worried Mozzie (White Collar), Yes I am a decade late, Young Jim Moriarty, Young Neal Caffrey, criminals, criminals in love, protective sebastian moran, the crossover no one needed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:40:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29449425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frumion_III/pseuds/Frumion_III
Summary: Neal Caffrey makes the acquaintance of a man who changes his life.
Relationships: Neal Caffrey/Jim Moriarty
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

Jim Moriarty was 13. He had just successfully committed his first murder. It felt much the way any well done experiment did, i.e. he was bored. Reaching past the incriminating pair of shoes he had liberated from Carl’s locker earlier, careful to keep anyone from seeing, he withdrew his latest maths textbook (borrowed) and a small notebook (stolen) from his backpack in an effort to stop his mind from overloading. Everything had gone perfectly to plan. He didn’t let the smile tugging at his facial muscles appear, not wanting anyone to notice the freak with a smile on his face. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, not when even this latest flock of sheep had noticed that he was different from them. Flicking open his book, Carl Power’s murderer lost himself in Group Theory.

A little less than a year later Jim stole his first item of real value. It was almost an accident. Jim had stumbled across the book in a little secondhand bookshop down in London with locks that wouldn’t have stopped Jim at five, let alone fifteen. He would have left without taking it, honestly, he would, if it hadn’t been so very appropriate. It was a first edition copy of ‘In Our Time’ reportedly worth £60,000, or it would be once he’d forged the signature. It was a new kind of crime for Jim, and he liked the flavour of this one. It was more complicated than death. The chemistry was more precise, more easily spotted. The human body was riddled with weaknesses, all of them easy to exploit. Pulses were easy to stop. 

Paper, ink, the curve of every letter. There was much less room for error here. He used the right ink of course, the right type of pen, crafted the right discolouration accounting for time. It fooled the bookseller he took it to in Dublin proper at least, and Jim liked to think Hemingway wouldn’t mind. He opened another bank account for the money, under the name Collin Sark and thought with a smile that he might keep that name. It sounded good, rolled off the tongue.

* * *

That September, Danny Brooks decided that he didn’t like to be late for things. He especially did not like to be late for school, which meant making up the time at the end of the day. He had tried setting the school clocks half an hour late, but that plan had been foiled by a cleaning lady with an eye for detail. Next he had successfully re-routed the bus he took to school so that it drove past his house, but a few days later it was back to the normal route, and Danny despised it. After a few more unnecessary detentions he had it all figured out. What he needed, he thought to himself as he walked to the bus stop across town, was one of those passes the fancy kids had that let you switch buses without paying more. 

He got to planning. Even at 11, school art supplies and other people’s pens found their way into his bag without any conscious thought on his part, true, but it wouldn’t do to make a mistake with something so important. He didn’t trust his sticky fingers quite enough yet to pick a pocket without some form of practice. Thus began his increasingly adept attempts to do so. Anything went, a pen from a boy his age, a set of keys from a teacher (much more challenging, they had an unfortunate tendency to clink), and eventually, pocket change. Then it was time to try a wallet. 

The man (his _mark,_ Danny thought giddily, that’s what they were called) wasn’t paying attention, taking a bite out of a sandwich the moment Danny struck, but he had planned it that way. The wallet was a small one, for so large a man, not heavy enough to be missed instantly. It worked like a charm. Danny was across the street before anyone noticed anything was wrong, and the wallet had $20 in it to boot. It gave his a rush, and he carefully tucked the wallet into his school bag after shoving the money into the front pocket of his jeans. 

The following week he was holding his very first forgery tightly in his small hands as he boarded the bus. The tell-tale beep didn’t bring a gleeful smile to his lips, but only because he knew that would be suspicious. He had done it. His plan had worked. Danny Brooks had been late to school for the last time. 

* * *

Rare books were interesting for a little less than two years. It had been fun while it lasted, but now Jim was back to being bored. He was at university early, but the 'people' weren't any different from the ones at secondary school had been. Cambridge was boring. Sex was boring. He was even bored of the professor he was currently blackmailing with evidence of the aforementioned sex. Lectures were boring. He already knew all of the material. Jim had come to the conclusion that no one else could actually think. All of them colouring within the boring little lines of law, society, convention, day in, day out. It made for a dull university experience.

He’d barely even had to try to discover the small but somewhat effective attempts by a group of chemistry students to purify cocaine, and it didn’t do much for Jim when he’d sampled some of it. It was funny watching them panic when he’d stolen it, true, and he did have a non-insubstantial cut of their sales, but it was boring. They had all been disappointingly easy to threaten. He’d got all but one with the insignificant threat of telling tales, and the other one had a younger sister he was oddly close with. That one was a bit less boring, he would admit. After all, there was nothing like a sordid family secret to keep things interesting, but it wasn’t fun for very long. Not enough moving parts. Then Jim was back to square one, chess pieces all lined up as they should be, present and correct. University ended, four years worth of master’s degree level mathematics completed in two, and the world went on as usual. It was almost enough to make him scream.

Jim had taught himself German in a spare week or two, and Russian when the mood struck to earn a bit of quick cash and he came across a rare text that required it. He’d collected a handful of interesting people on the Russian job, one of whom was named, it turned out, Sebastian Moran. What British ex-military crack shot Sebastian Moran had been doing in Russia, Jim had decided not to look into on account of liking his body bullet-free. 

The two of them had met on a rooftop of all places, where Jim had inadvertently interrupted an arms deal troubleshooting muster. (What could he say? He adored the drama of high places) Sebastian, taking Jim for an unfamiliar Russian contact, had begun to explain where things were going wrong with the trade, only to see the man he’d been expecting opening the door behind Jim. That had taken quite some explaining, but Jim found the deal interesting enough to solve their problem and then, then he had a favour to call in from the biggest crime family in Russia. Not a bad weekend. Sebastian Moran had followed him home. It was rather sweet actually, not unlike a stray dog, though he kept that particular allusion to himself. After spending a week getting steadily more bored of eavesdropping on Jim’s mathematical chats with the Cambridge faculty, Moran had gone to ground. He left Jim a calling card.

When Jim received the phone call that changed things, he was a third of the way through a truly inspired PhD thesis paper. The following day the university received the news that his father had suddenly died, and he begged a leave of compassion. They granted it of course. It was a terrible loss for one so bright, the star of the mathematics PhD course at barely 17, they would let him take as much time as he needed. It was remarkably well behaved for him to even ask, and he smiled slightly as he packed his bags, sure he was alone. He was a regular upstanding citizen. When he left, bags in hand, it was with a hunched misery that ruined his posture. He was pale, shaky, and entirely convincing. He had to be, after all there was a client waiting. 

Instead of taking the miserable flight back to Dublin he’d booked, Jim changed airports and bought a plane ticket to Rome under the alias Peter Bell. He had a mess to fix. It was the Russian family who had recommended him, and Jim would hate for any of their friends to think them less than capable judges of character. He got to work, eyes finally flickering to life as he took a look at their little puzzle and let himself go. It was nice, every once in a while, to let the hurricane inside his head tear apart a problem with real people attached. He was the pied piper now, paid to make rats dance to his tune. It almost brought a smile to his face.

* * *

At 14 the young man still calling himself Danny Brooks discovered exactly what a face like his could get him. It wasn’t technically a scam as such, to go to a party on a rich girl’s arm or blackmail the banker’s son who liked to look at him for too long, and it worked. People fell over themselves to help him with the little legal infractions he used to make some quick cash. They were left dazzled by his smile, happily ignoring his sticky fingers and stolen clothes if he blew them a kiss. His face, his smile, his fluttered lashes and pointed glances, they gave him power over other people. It sent a thrill through him every time. 

It wasn’t limited to people his own age either, but he had to be more careful with the adults. Then it was a dance of guilt and blackmail, rather than coy smiles. He saw them looking, and he learnt to use the darker desires of those around him to his advantage. He had a few people in his pocket for emergencies now, and a steady supply of whatever he wanted. Money, mostly. Tickets to art shows, when the mood struck or there was a articular piece he wanted to see. The occasional bottle of this or that. They knew what he had on them, knew he was smart enough to have taken photos and learnt names, and they would all fall into line because of it. He knew how to play this game, whoever he was playing it against. That’s all sex was, in the end. A game. Oscar Wilde had the right of it; Everything in the world was about sex except sex. Sex was about power. 

By this time he could shoot a bullseye at a respectable number of yards, count cards and forge a passable imitation of most forms of ID, the last of which he was keeping from his mother only by being lucky. He had also developed an interest in art history, but it would be some years before he put his personal artistic talents to the test in ‘restoring’ a masterpiece onto a blank canvass. Later that year Danny’s luck would run out. It was in the course of the subsequent conversation that he decided against finishing school. 

“What are all of these Danny?” His mother's voice had gone high and strained, the way it only got when he asked about his father, and Danny felt his heart sink.

“You went through my things.” He said flatly, the charm he could usually muster up in scenarios like this draining away at his mother’s pale face. 

“Evidently I should have sooner. Who’s Vincent Patterson?” 

“You mean you didn’t recognise the photo? I’m hurt.” It was a weak attempt at a joke, and his mother only sighed heavily. 

“Just like your father.” she muttered, half turning away as if pained by the very sight of him.

“Well what’s that supposed to mean?” He asked, but she only shook her head and walked back into the kitchen. His room was in disarray, his paints scattered across the floor and his books rearranged. It had clearly been a full search. Danny swore loudly and swiped a hand across the few of his school books he had cared to keep, knocking the pile onto the floor. The loud bangs of books hitting the floor changed something for both of them. Their flat was too small for Neal. Their whole town was too small. In the back of his mind a small voice wondered what his mother had meant by those four damning words. _Just like your father._ It echoed in his head, and Danny Brook began to wonder what that really meant.

* * *

Jim had finished his PhD as quickly as possible, graduating with the expected trail of honours and well wishes. Somewhat ironically, he spent the following birthday getting shot at in Morocco. It had been quite the 19th birthday present. He'd never been more glad Sebastian had taken to accompanying him on the little work holidays (they were becoming something of a fixture in his life). Sebastian had found the shooter but not the reasoning behind the shots, so Jim spent a happy afternoon doing a hands on study in the psychology of pain and loyalty in the human mind. At the end of the evening they had their name, and Jim had utterly _ruined_ a lovely shirt he'd bought in Paris when he had last been there. He hadn't realised quite how much the little sniper was going to be able to take before breaking, and his shirt had payed the price. They had spent the night hunting down the results of their study.

After that he started to build an American branch of his spider’s web, though he hadn't yet had a chance to get over there in the flesh, as it were. Still, the threads found their way to him and he dutifully began to weave them into something of a network. It contained people all over the place; An innocuous art professor at NYU, a small-town cop from Vermont, the assistant of the man set to take over one of the bigger tech companies over there. He’d been meaning to expand out west since he finished his masters of course, and it was bringing in things better than money already. The strings of the web vibrated with other people's touches, with the deals of those that lived in his world (whether they knew it yet or not). It was bringing in secrets.

Bonds turned out to be reasonably fun, as did counterfeiting. Both of them were far more interesting than the pedestrian money laundering he’d been doing since he was at university, and unlike the other two, counterfeiting provided a continuous puzzle. No sooner had he counterfeited something successfully than there was some minute change or another kind of note to try. It was a gift that for once, managed to keep giving. He was sure he’d be bored of it soon but for now he could concentrate on it for days. 

Coding was another pastime that turned out to have seemingly endless moving parts. That one was very useful too, and people like Richard Brook, Evan Lynch and Adrian Moran (yes, he’d asked, he wasn't suicidal. Moran’s expression at the question alone had been worth it, and he hadn’t said no) came into being through the proper channels. They all had a different degree, families, hobbies, employment histories. The list went on. By the time Jim turned 21 they were fully realised people with nothing in common. Nothing, that is, except a face, his face. He’d always loved a show, and being any one of his characters was a full performance. Richard was a drama student, Adrian studied law and Evan Lynch was used for other things. Things in Jim’s real world.

* * *

Neal George Caffrey. The name he had chosen sounded good. The man his father had really been did not. A dirty cop and a worse husband. It left a bad taste in his mouth to think about it for too long, so he was avoiding just that. Neal, which he thought suited him far better than Danny ever had, was leaving. He was also doing a poor job of convincing himself he felt conflicted about it. His mother had lied to him for most of his life, about everything from his name to his father’s death to his birthday (he still wasn’t sure why she had lied about that, but it was actually on March 21st, which was interesting. He had been 18 for two months already and he hadn’t known) He had booked a one way flight to New York on his fake birthday, off the books on the card of his current girlfriend’s father and didn’t feel so much as a flicker of guilt over it. Still, he pretended for his mother’s sake that he would miss this dreary little town. He was 18(ish) and the world was going to be his. 

Breathing the air of New York was like coming to life. Neal couldn’t walk down a street without picking a pocket and life was good. Really really good. So he only owned a suitcase full of regular clothes, a library card and one nice suit. It didn’t matter. You could get anything in New York, and almost anything for free. It had taken him exactly a day and a half to find a reasonable place to stay and he liked Alice. She was lovely, spoke perfect Spanish and French and couldn’t get enough of him. He was living the life he’d always wanted. It was making him want to do more. 

He had been spotting a bookshop he had found called Ursus books, specialising in art history and rare edition literature for about two weeks before he walked in and realised where he was. It was heaven. He couldn’t risk being banned from here. So began his education in old paper textures, book binding techniques and the art of old masters. He’d picked up bits and pieces of modern and ancient art at school, read his way through all the books he could borrow, steal or buy on it back in St. Louis, but this was a whole new level. Neal left at closing time, a smile on his face. He didn’t even notice the appreciative gaze of the larger of the two security guards, or the way into the shop’s rare book collection that it could have provided. He was lost in thought.

* * *

Jim was on a job in Copenhagen a month before his 22nd birthday, wrapping up an entirely boring mess involving a rather valuable family heirloom, two households (alike in dignity, though without the lovestruck teenagers to get in the way) and several hundred kilos of cocaine when he caught the thread of something with real promise. It was quite by chance that he happened to hear a rather interesting conversation between an art restorationist and an enthusiastic student, but it was enough to catch his interest. Art forgery. He wrapped up the mess he’d been asked to fix perhaps a little more quickly than he might have, and graciously accepted the payment offered in return. He had the face of everyone involved too, but they didn’t know that. He always had had a talent for blending into a crowd. 

It was leagues more complicated than anything else he’d done. Petty blackmail, less petty blackmail, drugs, fraud, pickpocketing, murder, theft, even the more recent counterfeiting. That was all easy. But to recreate a masterpiece from nothing. Just like that, Jim Moriarty was entranced. He taught himself the chemistry of it without hurry, reading through the night in a private library he’d only picked two locks to get into (terrible security, he would be tempted to inform them when he left if he cared more), and then picked up a pen. This was no messily annotated star chart or one of the few diagrams he’d ever drawn for his little projects. It had to be perfect. 

He started in the top left hand corner of the painting, and began to draw. After the fourth draft, every line was perfectly copied and Jim had reproduced a lost Rubens. After the fifth it looked right. After the sixth it would probably be submitted for auction before anyone suspected it. Jim set about getting the paper he would need. The seventh painting was done with the right paint, the right brush materials and was finished off in an oven to age it, the paper obtained from the back of an obliging book from 1602. It looked good enough to him. Rubens in hand, Jim began to discreetly look for a buyer. That endeavour finally took him to New York and the Matthiesen Gallery. There was one in London, true, but that was boring. He’d always wanted to see America in person. 


	2. Chapter 2

The painting Neal had come to steal was a fake. The more time he spent looking at it the more sure he was. Part of him coldly suggested that he was making it all up to avoid having to actually attempt the theft but something about the picture was wrong. It was accurate, almost eerily so, held behind the bulletproof glass he’d been expecting and stunningly detailed, but as he stared at it, what was wrong with the painting began to dawn on him. It had been drawn beginning from the top left hand corner. That was it. No one would ever fake a signature that way because no one would think to, it made no sense. But for someone with a skill for precision and no understanding of the artistic process? It would seem acceptable to do for a painting.

A painting like this would have begun as a sketch, then been painted the way any picture is, in layers of detail and colouring. It had been faked. It was a beautiful piece, Neal thought it almost a shame the forger couldn’t put his own name to it, but there was something distinctly mechanical in the way it had been copied. He swallowed. There was no reason for anyone to suspect him of anything. If he was going to take it he had to do it now. The only question was, was he?

The room was all but unoccupied, a small, pale young man examining another of the old masters the only other person there. He was pretty, not in the striking way Neal himself was, but his mussed hair and oversized sweater gave him an air of attractive naivety. He was around Neal’s age, perhaps a year or two older, and he held himself with a quiet confidence that concealed what Neal suspected was burning, restless energy. That alone would have been enough to give Neal pause. He was almost magnetic, and Neal felt the hair on the back of his neck begin to rise as a slight movement to the right told him he’d been noticed. In that moment Neal made a snap decision that would change the course of his life.

“Sorry to bother you,” Said Neal, flashing his 1000 watt smile and touching the man’s arm, “But could I borrow you for just a second?”  
“Uh, Sure,” Said the man. His accent was clipped and cheerfully obliging, pure New York. The slight pause spoke to the man’s attraction to Neal. “I’m James by the way.”  
“Neal. Are you studying art?”  
“That’s my major.” Said the man, a smile on his face that didn’t reach the glittering dark eyes Neal had somehow fallen into. They shone with mirth, though Neal didn’t think anything about their conversation was particularly amusing, and there was a hint of something else lurking beneath the laughter. “You?”

  
“Just an interested amateur. I want a second opinion on this Rubens.”  
“What of it?” Said James, barely glancing away from Neal’s face to examine the picture.  
“I think it’s a fake.” As he said it something in the man’s eyes changed, the laughter seeping away until Neal felt like he was looking into dead eyes. Shark eyes. He shivered.  
“Interesting theory.” Said the man, his charmingly smooth American accent falling away as something else crept in that took Neal by surprise. “Let’s discuss it over dinner.” Irish. He realised. Neal smiled, and it was one of his best flirtatious smiles. Nothing less would do for what could only be the very man who had forged the painting.  
“Suits me.”

* * *

Jim was a split second from losing his fucking mind. How had some (admittedly gorgeous) kid who barely looked legal, let alone qualified, spotted his fake? He was a self admitted amateur, and what kind of shoddy fucking failure of a forger was Jim, that his craft had been spotted so fast by someone with a mere interest in art. It was perfect. What had he _missed_? The muscles in his neck shifted slightly, his jaw locked, and bless the man, Neal actually noticed. “Looking a little tense there Jamie,” he said with a light grin. Jim’s eye twitched.  
“Jim, please.”  
“If we weren't going to dinner I’d offer a massage.”  
“If we weren't going to dinner I’d accept.” Jim shot back, swallowing as he was hit with the full force of the man’s smile. The man clearly knew what a face like his could get him, and Jim wasn't immune. God, Jim wasn't immune.

  
“May I?” Asked Neal, and Jim blinked. Those were his cigarettes. A thief then, and a good one. It had been years since Jim had been pickpockteted successfully. Usually he would break the fingers of anyone who tried that. Neal shot him a smile and the impulse to do violence abated slightly, replaced by heat.  
“But of course.” Neal lit it with the lighter that had been hidden inside the lining of Jim’s coat. Jim swallowed, more aroused, and Neal caught the motion and smiled again. This one was off centre, a trickster’s grin. Jim wanted him now. He was interesting.  
“It’s yours isn’t it?”  
“What’s mine?” Asked Jim, blinking slowly.  
“The Rubens.” Jim let a small, displeased frown mar his face.

“Yes,” He said. “How’d you spot it?” 

“You started in the top left.” Said Neal. “I could tell by the brushstrokes. You’re not a painter by habit, are you?” Jim felt a muscle in his jaw clench. Still, the man was clever enough to have spotted it, so he deserved the small concession of truth. 

“Not primarily.” He allowed. Neal beamed, eyes alight at having been proved correct, and _god_ Jim wanted to have sex with him. He was probably a bit too young for him, he certainly looked it, but it wasn’t as if this was the first line Jim had ever crossed, and he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Are you?” 

“Among other things.” Replied Neal with a sly, telling grin. 

“What other things?” Asked Jim, knowing full well a direct question would yield nothing. 

“Come home with me, and I’ll show you.” Said Neal, and Jim felt his lips twist into a smile without his permission.  
“Are you prepositioning me?” He replied, his face forming an exaggerated mask of shock.

“Not primarily.” Replied Neal with an easy grin, and in that moment Jim decided that Neal was his. He would keep him forever. Hearing his own words echoed in the other man’s voice did delightful things to the chemistry of his brain. “Though, I wouldn’t rule it out if you didn’t.” Continued Neal, and Jim let a slow, real smile creep across his face. 

“I don’t.”

When they got back to Neal’s barely furnished apartment Jim took one look around and felt his eyebrow begin to climb. There was _fuck all_ here. He thought of commenting, but didn't really care enough to bother. Then Neal had revealed his own project, and Jim forgot all about the room. Laid out corner to corner across the rickety wooden table were the best bond forgeries Jim had ever seen. 

“Beautiful.” He said. Seeing the evidence of Neal’s sheer skill, his pure fucking talent and clear dedication to his craft, sent a vicious, grating surge of need through Jim. Need to own, to possess, to protect. Jim swallowed harshly and pulled Neal down into a kiss. 

He wrapped himself around the taller man and flipped a coin behind his back. It landed tails. Jim felt his pulse pick up. It had been a while. “I hope you don't mind topping love,”  
“And here I thought you’d come for my good company.” Replied Neal before leaning down into a deep kiss. Jim bit his lip, just a little, not nearly hard enough to draw blood, and felt the taller man shudder against him.  
“I’ll come for your good company when you make me.” Muttered Jim, carefully biting into the pulse point on Neal’s neck and licking over the mark as he moaned. Jim really would have liked to taste Neal’s blood. He restrained himself. It would be a test of self control, a game of sorts, played only against his own mind. He would prove to himself that he could play nicely with his new amusement.

* * *

Neal knew full well that his throat would be more bruise than not tomorrow morning but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. Jim was completely gorgeous, even more dangerous and evidently almost as possessive, which definitely shouldn't have been the turn on that it absolutely was. Jim looked good like this, when he wasn't so carefully controlling his facial muscles, more alive somehow. Neal half wanted to keep him here just to know that he could pull this expression from Jim, whoever he really was. The way he had looked at Neal, when he had shown him the bonds, sent thrills of a bone deep pleasure through him. Jim looked at him like he was the first real person he’d ever seen. There was a terrible, aching recognition in his eyes, and Neal knew without having to ask what it was for. In Jim, Neal had found something entirely new. He had found a mind like his. Jim had evidently discovered the same thing in him. 

In the small hours of the morning Neal woke to a raised voice, his body radiating contentment until he registered something . He could hear pacing, Jim’s steady tread, then another long pause. Neal quietly rearranged himself so that he could listen to the conversation a little better. Something soft, then another yell. A screech almost. “IDIOT.” A pause the length of a drawn out sigh, then, slightly more measured, “And how is it possible that you were shortsighted enough to give back the keys of your own accord?” Neal frowned slightly. That prickling sense of unease was back. Jim was dangerous. “I don’t care, Nathaniel, I really don’t,” he was saying, his tone almost conversational now, and with a start Neal realised he must be walking towards the bedroom. Hurriedly he moved back to his original position. “If you get back to a lab where you can work, we’ll both be much happier I’m sure. If not,” a pause. Neal shivered again. “Well, do you know how much the liquidated lipid fats in a human body are worth?” The unmistakable sound of the dial tone followed, and Neal tried to calm his pulse as Jim walked back into the room. “Sorry about that my dear. Work related I’m afraid.” 

Neal froze, not sure how Jim had known he was awake. “Well,” he said slowly, “There’s no rest for the wicked.” and smiled. It was a practiced grin, lighthearted and half-lustful. A mask he wore well. Jim saw straight through it.

“I’ve upset you.” It was a careful thing, that small sentence of Jim’s. Half admission, half accusation. Neal looked up sharply, not bothering to hide the fear that wrote itself across his face. Jim would see it either way and trying to conceal it would only come across as a slight to his intelligence now.  
“What can I say?” he said with a rush of air, “It’s not every day I hear threats like that.”  
“You’re afraid.”  
“It didn’t exactly sound like a joke.”  
“You’re clever,” said Jim quietly by way of reply, “Sexy too. I like both of those things.”  
“For now.” Said Neal, and Jim climbed back into the bed, cupping Neal’s face with one hand.

“Oh I sincerely doubt you could bore me my dear. I only act out when I’m bored.”

It was an insane answer. Neal had no reason to believe Jim, nothing to go on but the word of the man who had just threatened to kill someone over lost keys. He did. Neal could hardly understand it himself, but he did believe him. Maybe it was the sincere look in his eyes, though Neal of all people knew how easy it was to manufacture that. Maybe it was the way Jim had lit up at Neal’s explanation of his long past con with the bus routes to school. “I suppose I’d better keep you entertained then.” he said after a long pause. Jim began to laugh, a strangely high pitched thing which Neal suspected was his real laughter. It was odd, a wild, uncooperative sound that didn’t seem to fit the room it was contained it. Neal found that he quite liked it.

The fake Rubens sold to a private buyer in the end for a staggering 26 million. Jim walked away with a small smile and Neal wrapped an arm around his shoulders with a wide grin, the touch less innocent than it appeared. “God you’re attractive.” Said Neal quietly, pulling the smaller man into a burning kiss as they got back into his apartment. “And rich too, as of fifteen minutes ago.” He murmured, their mouths briefly an inch apart. “I’d rob you if I didn’t know what you do for a living.”

  
“Ah, I take it you’ll miss me then.” replied Jim, and Neal pulled back, wishing he was more surprised. Jim read the sadness in his expression and smiled tightly. It wasn’t an apology, but it was a display of feeling Neal had a feeling Jim didn’t usually allow himself. He would take what he could get. “I’m going back to London love, I’ve been gone too long as it is.” Jim said, a softness lurking behind the endearment. Neal discovered, to his utter horror, that there was the beginnings of a lump in his throat. It was fucking ridiculous, and he refused to acknowledge it.  
“Oh.” He said quietly, and then, after a moment’s pause, “It was fun.” The unspoken ‘goodbye’ in those four small words was obvious, but he wouldn’t be the one to say it. He had learnt early that it tended to make things more awkward. Jim clearly didn’t play by the same rules. 

  
“This isn’t goodbye Neal.” He said, laughing slightly. “You’re mine now.” There was a possessive, almost violent lust in Jim’s eyes as he said it, and Neal should have felt far more fear than he did. Instead he let a cheeky smile break across his face.  
“Does this mean I get to call you Jamie?” Jim stared at him for a minute and then burst out laughing. It was that high pitched laughter again, the one Neal suspected of being genuine, and between fits of giggles Jim kissed him deeply, breaking away to laugh again before sobering up. Neal watched, laughter fading as Jim rearranged his coat and headed for the door.  
“Go ahead Neal. As long as you call.” He said, and tossed him a phone. By the time Neal caught it Jamie was gone.


End file.
